Analysis of The Leaf And The Tree
Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892 (Rockland) – 1950 (Austerlitz)
When will you learn, myself, to be
a dying leaf on a living tree?
Budding, swelling, growing strong,
Wearing green, but not for long,
Drawing sustenance from air,
That other leaves, and you not there,
May bud, and at the autumn's call
Wearing russet, ready to fall?
Has not this trunk a deed to do
Unguessed by small and tremulous you?
Shall not these branches in the end
To wisdom and the truth ascend?
And the great lightning plunging by
Look sidewise with a golden eye
To glimpse a tree so tall and proud
It sheds its leaves upon a cloud?
Here, I think, is the heart's grief:
The tree, no mightier than the leaf,
Makes firm its root and spreads it crown
And stands; but in the end comes down.
That airy top no boy could climb
Is trodden in a little time
By cattle on their way to drink.
The fluttering thoughts a leaf can think,
That hears the wind and waits its turn,
Have taught it all a tree can learn.
Time can make soft that iron wood.
The tallest trunk that ever stood,
In time, without a dream to keep,
Crawls in beside the root to sleep.
Scheme | AABBCCDDEEFFGGHH IIJJK KLLMMNNOO |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (30%) |
Metre | 1111111 010110101 1010101 1011111 1010011 11010111 11010101 10101011 11110111 11101001 11110001 11000101 00110101 1110101 11011101 11110101 1111011 011100101 11110111 01100111 11011111 11000101 11011111 010010111 11010111 11110111 11111101 01011101 01010111 10010111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,027 |
Words | 203 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 16, 5, 9 |
Lines Amount | 30 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 271 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 67 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 01, 2023
- 1:01 min read
- 202 Views
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